


Godhands

by Livvy



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Ala Mhigo (Final Fantasy XIV), Body Horror, Coming of Age, Emotionally Repressed Ala Mhigans, F/F, F/M, Non-Chronological, Possession, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:27:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 16
Words: 17,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26739586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Livvy/pseuds/Livvy
Summary: Do not forget where you are standing.A coming-of-age prequel in which a future Riskbreaker hunts the monster that will one day define him.Godhands takes place in the Undercity of Ala Mhigo, a fan-devised setting based on lore from both Final Fantasy XIV and the Ivalice Alliance game Vagrant Story. The work begins in the year 1543 of the Sixth Astral Era - fourteen years before Ala Mhigo’s occupation - and ends more than a year later. Chapter titles are derived from Vagrant Story's Undercity map room names.
Kudos: 4





	1. Workshop Godhands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally published as "Out Like a Lamb."

Ashley had never been particularly strong or smart compared to the other boys in his district. What he possessed instead was a keen intuition. Often he could sense when he or someone else was walking deeper into trouble, and though he did not usually seek trouble out, this gift had served him well throughout his first fourteen years.

One afternoon, he returned home and knew like a punch to the gut that something was horribly wrong.

“I’m afraid there’s been an accident,” said an unfamiliar voice.

A tall Hyuran man garbed from head to toe in dark furs was seated on the kitchen table, directly between the two place settings laid out at either side. Ashley could only stare at the specter for several long seconds, until at last he summoned the courage and good sense to demand, “Who are you?!” Then, as a more forceful addendum, “Get out!”

The man stood, though he continued to lean his weight against the table. His posture was slightly stooped in a way that gave Ashley the impression of an overlarge bird. “I’m Blackram,” he said. “An assassin of the Undercity. And though it pains me to say it, your mother Brynhilde won’t be returning home this eve.”

Ashley blinked, but he could not see clearly no matter what he tried. The entire world came to him as a rush of color and noise and he understood none of it. “What?”

“I was given a commission to kill a servant girl working for the royal family,” Blackram explained. He spoke each word of Common with a sharp, unwavering precision. “Rather a nasty business - something to do with some secrets she couldn’t keep. She was out in the spice markets this afternoon, as was your mother. Your mother noticed me the moment I loosed my arrow; she correctly guessed my intentions and stepped in front of my target in that split second. She saved the girl’s life, though it cost her her own.” Blackram shrugged his hunched shoulders. “Of course, the girl didn’t have the good sense to run, and I had a commission to fill… She died regardless, you understand…”

Ashley could only stare in horror.

“I ascertained Brynhilde’s identity, learned she had a son. And I must tell you, I am truly sorry for the loss you have suffered through my own carelessness. I would make recompense, if you would accept it.” Blackram removed something from a pocket and tossed it to Ashley. It was a lock of auburn hair that could only have belonged to Brynhilde Riot. Ashley could not have been more stunned than if Blackram had thrown over her entire head. “My men and I have more of her personal effects at my headquarters. We had to dispose of her body quickly, you see.”

“You-”

“I know,” he said, and Ashley wondered how Blackram could have known what he had meant to say when Ashley himself still did not. “You seem a good, capable lad, and in truth, I’m in need of a new apprentice. I’d like to take you under my wing, as restitution for all this.”

“ _Fuck you!_ ” The words sounded pathetic and juvenile the moment they left Ashley’s lips. A cumbersome silence fell between them, and all the while Blackram’s mouth was twisted in a smile that Ashley despised. Who was this man - this _murderer_ \- to talk of restitution?

“I’ll not force you in any one direction,” Blackram said at last. He pushed himself away from the table and stepped forward; Ashley fought the urge to recoil. “The Undercity can be a dangerous place for a boy alone. But should you come with me, I’ll look after you, keep you safe. I swear it.”

“I want nothing to do with you!”

“If you insist.” Blackram turned, and Ashley heard the telltale tap of a flint against steel. In the next instant, his mother’s favorite tablecloth was alight with flame. He let out a strangled cry.

“The city watch are already on my trail.” The blaze spread up the wall of the hut behind Blackram, but he gave it no acknowledgement as he stowed his instruments of arson. “This will hold their attention for a few minutes at least. Trust me, it’s for the best; you won’t want those vipers poking around here.” With that, he walked toward the front door as calmly as if he were concluding a social visit. The fire had spread to the nearest wall. “Should you want for anything,” he said, “you need only say the word.” He pushed something cold and sharp into Ashley’s hand as he passed, but Ashley ignored it. He could only stand in awe as the house began to burn around him.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” Blackram called over the popping, crackling inferno. “Use that to know where to find me.” He shrugged his furs tighter about him, abandoned the doorstep, and was gone from Ashley’s view.

The moment he disappeared, the panic set in. Ashley lunged first and foremost for his mother’s patchwork quilt, but his racing mind could not fixate on any other necessities. He needed gil, but his mother’s gil pouch had been on her person and her savings was in a jar tucked at the back of the kitchen cupboard. There would be no retrieving it now. He whirled around and around, staring at the flames as they consumed the only home he had ever known, the only life he had ever had, until at last he turned and fled out the open door.

* * *

Ashley was neither tall nor brawny. Though his mother had stood as tall as most Highlander women, his father had been a Midlander of Thavnairian descent, and all evidence brought about through puberty seemed to suggest that Ashley would inherit his physique. He had done his best that morning to scrub away the soot and dirt caked onto his face with water from a public well, but all the same, he was not an impressive sight as he stood in the bustling office of the city watch. He was several heads shorter than everyone in the vicinity save the Lalafellin clerk, and he was certainly the youngest by at least a decade. Each of them carried a sword at their hip or a pike at their back.

“My name is Riot,” he said to the captain when his appointment had at last been granted. “I’ve come to enlist.”

He had spoken of this decision with his mother in the weeks before her death, in a time that might have been eras ago. She had regarded him with her warm, solemn eyes as he had told her of his goal to one day serve in the city watch, to help bring some sort of stability to Ala Mhigo.

So long as he joined the watch for the right reasons, she had said, she would be proud of him. Ashley supposed the threat of homelessness and starvation was as good a reason as any.

The guard captain was a bearded, balding man with a stern face and ink-stained hands. Ashley judged by his expression that meeting with a teenaged city guard hopeful was low on his list of priorities. “How old are you, then?”

“Sixteen, sir.”

The captain’s jaw tightened as he scoffed. “Scrawny _and_ a liar.”

“Please, sir!” Ashley begged. “I already know my way around the sword and staff, and I’m a fast learner. I can-”

“Spare me, boy.” The man stood from his desk, and Ashley followed him as he strode down the hall. “I don’t give a rat’s arse how smart you think you are. Come back when you’re sixteen or able to pass for it, like all the other recruits. I daresay your parents will be wondering after you.”

“I can help you find the assassin Blackram!”

A collective hush fell over the hall the moment the name left his lips. Though every eye turned toward him, Ashley had never felt more thoroughly isolated.

“Stop wasting my time,” the captain snarled. “You, know of Blackram? Look at you. Well-fed, unbloodied. A boy like yourself’s never set so much as a foot in the Undercity.”

Ashley said nothing of the pendant in his pocket, because the captain was right. He had studied the sun-shaped copper trinket at every idle moment since Blackram had pushed it into his hand, and he still had no notion at all of any clue it might hold to the man’s location. He was a small, stupid boy from a well-off family, and there was so much he would never understand.

Enduring the stares of the entire watch office, Ashley stumbled back out into the street.

* * *

He had not eaten in more than two days. At first shock and fear had numbed his appetite, but his trek to the guard station the previous morning had expended any reserves of energy he had left. He shuffled through unfamiliar neighborhoods in a daze, carrying his mother’s quilt over one shoulder as though he were some Highland warrior.

He could not bring himself to go back to his own district. The thought of returning to the burned, blackened shell of his home made him feel weaker than ever. Over and over he wondered what he was going to do. His mother had kept a quiet, modest living; she had had no friends, at least none on whom he might impose. He would beg for work if there was work to be had, though he knew he had little to offer to anyone as an apprentice. He could sell his own indenture, or labor as a deckhand on any of the vessels that traversed the Jade Sea. Yet all of these futures seemed to consist of trading one misery for another. If forced to choose between slavery and death…

Often the sharp prongs of Blackram’s pendant poked him through his trouser pocket as he walked. _I’ll look after you, keep you safe. I swear it._ The mere thought of turning to his mother’s killer for aid made his gut clench with shame. With every step he took, the assassin’s words rang louder and louder through his head like a Fist’s mantra until they were all he heard.

With Blackram he could be taught a trade, given a job. Surely that would be better than dying alone and destitute on a street corner.

At sunset, he half-collapsed onto some steps in an empty alley. The previous night had been bitterly cold; even the quilt had afforded him little shelter against the elements, and he’d awoken exhausted and chilled down to the bone. The alley walls, stained black with some sort of grime, would at least protect from the worst of the spring wind. Ashley laid the blanket across his lap, hugged his knees close to his chest, and, for the first time since Brynhilde’s death, broke down into sobs.

After some time - minutes, perhaps, or hours - he became aware of a steady weight leaning into his left side. A boy no older than he was had come to join him, had sat down beside him as confidently as though they had been friends from birth. Yet Ashley had never seen the boy in his life; he would have remembered him if he had. In the twilight he could make out dirt-streaked dark skin, thick waves of hair that might have been blond or brown or anything in between, and large, peaceful, pensive eyes carefully watching the world around them.

Ashley waited until he had no more tears to spend before he attempted to speak again, and when he did, the words came out as little more than a whisper. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” The boy shrugged. “‘Haven’t seen you 'round here before.”

“My mother, she… she died.”

“Ah.” The boy shifted his weight a bit so that he was not leaning into Ashley quite so heavily. “Can’t say I know what you’re going through. But I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Ashley admitted. “I tried going to the city watch for a position, but they wouldn’t have me. And most everyone just… it’s been only a day, and yet…”

He had been invisible, cast out. He had had no one and nothing, save Blackram and a quilt.

He had reached into his pocket to grab onto the lock of his mother’s hair. He had not realized he had been running a thumb over the edges of Blackram’s pendant until the boy gave a tiny, almost imperceptible start at the thing he held in his hands.

“Where’d you get that?”

Ashley’s immediate suspicion was that the boy meant to steal the thing, but presently he cursed himself for thinking so little of someone who had shown him only kindness. The boy’s eyes held no malice that Ashley could see, only wariness twinned with concern. “I… Blackram. He gave it to me. He said it would… help me find him.”

The boy muttered a curse, then turned to Ashley with something resembling awe. “You’re the one whose ma he killed. Up on the March.”

“Y-Yes.”

They sat in silence for minutes. At last the boy replied, “What’s your name?”

“Ashley. R-Riot.”

“Marco. I think I can help you, Ashley. Mind you, it’s not really my call. But I can take you to someone who’s been trying to get at Blackram for… gods, for ages.”

“What did he do?”

“Blackram? Gods, where to start. He’s propped himself up as some sort of king of the Undercity, only he doesn’t much care who he has to take out to make it happen. That market where he killed the servant, along with your ma - that’s a neutral zone. Half the East End’s a neutral zone. No one from the Undercity’s supposed to kill _anyone_ up there, for any reason.”

“He said it was a commission.”

“Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. Killing’s one thing - killing happens all over the city, 'specially under it - but not in a neutral zone. That’s just the way things’re done, to keep folks like you and your ma out of our business.” The boy scowled. “Blackram, though… he thinks he’s above all that.”

“And you know someone who can help me?”

“I do, and she can. _If_ she’ll help you’s the real question.” Marco jumped to his feet in a single fluid motion and reached out a hand to pull Ashley up beside him. “But I figure she will, if I’m the one asking.”

Ashley accepted the proffered hand, tossed the quilt back over his shoulder, and followed Marco over to the end of the alley. A rusting iron grate sat loose over a crumbling layer of cobblestones, guarding what might once have been a refuse pit. Marco gave the grate a few experimental kicks with the side of his boot, then began to heave it aside with wiry arms. Ashley helped him on the opposite end until it was free, then let it drop with a clatter to the ground. Together, he and Marco stood over their path: a stone staircase leading deep beneath Ala Mhigo.

“First,” said Marco, his chest heaving a little from exertion, “we’ll get you something to eat and drink. There’s a clean water drip a bit to the north. After that, if you’re still up for walking, I can take you to meet Élodie. I’ll warn you, she can be a real piece of work… but she’s sure to have a plan. Even if she’s the only one who likes it.”

Ashley looked down into the tunnel, across what little could be seen of the steep steps. It smelled horrendous, and it was completely dark save for the sparse illuminations of magicked lamps along the walls.

For the first time since meeting Blackram, he felt not an inkling of danger.

“Let’s go.”


	2. Fear of the Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for sexual assault (groping), sexual harassment, and implied stalking.

There was a boy Sigrid saw sometimes, only ever around the most covert entrances to the Undercity. He was thin and quick, with a shock of hair that looked blond on the rare occasions when he was properly clean. He had been lurking in those areas since he was very young, and though she saw so little of his day-to-day life, she had no doubt that he filled his time with adventures to call his own. Sometimes she would toss him a coin in exchange for a list of everyone who had passed him by, but most days, they greeted one another with no more than a nod and a smile.

And though it sounded strange to admit, even to herself, she did not want better things for him. She had created her own life catering to Ala Mhigo’s nobility and saw how discontent they were with their lot and with themselves. For herself, for the boy, she wanted only the fulfillment of dreams through hard work.

Sigrid had never aspired to motherhood - part of the reason why she had chosen her primary profession to begin with - but she imagined that if she were ever to change her mind, she would like to have a child like him.

She had been granted a temporary leave one evening as a reward for exceptional service throughout the week, and this had given her as good an excuse as any to run out to the Whitecap and deliver Diadra’s long-awaited tip over a pint or two. It was a cool but pleasant night aboveground, and she forsook the familiar tunnels of the Undercity to travel along the vacant market road, lost in her own thoughts as her feet carried her to her destination.

The door to the Whitecap swung open and a smallish figure covered in rags passed her by - a beggar, she thought, until he turned his face up to her and she recognized the boy illuminated in the golden lamplight from the tavern’s interior. His presence was unexpected at the very least, and she was so focused on trying to puzzle out how to greet him, or whether or not she even should, that she nearly missed the words he whispered to her: “Be careful.”

They were the most ominous words he’d ever said to her, and then he was gone in the next instant. Her heart at once began to pound. Instinct told her to give no hint that he had spoken at all, to keep from incriminating him by looking back at the way he’d departed - and so she walked further into the tavern.

Her usual booth for meeting with Diadra was occupied by a gaggle of fresh-faced mercenaries, but she milled around for no more than five minutes before they cleared out. In that time she cast about the tavern, searching for anything out of place. There was nothing so far as she could tell, though Hewn Oak’s usual cheer was absent and his face drawn instead into a serious expression. That might have meant nothing; there had been word that his husband was ill and might not last the month. Still, Sigrid asked him for the weakest of his ales before sitting down at her booth with a careful eye.

Faces came and went, and she lingered for nearly half a bell without any further indication that things might soon go awry. Neither was there any sign of Diadra or any of her number, though the Whitecap was usually as good a place as any to find them on a night like this. Then a door behind the bar swung open into the kitchen, and Sigrid thought she saw a flash of pitch-black furs.

Though anxiety seized her gut, she resolved to wash it down with a swig of ale.

Not five minutes later, a man sat down across from her in the booth.

“Hello, Sigrid,” said Blackram. “I’ll be taking your information on behalf of Diadra tonight.”

And now the tavern was full of men dressed all in black, including two Miqo'te conversing by the main door and a burly Roegadyn by the hall leading to the alley.

“I hope nothing _untoward_ has come to her,” she replied. He had the advantage over her here; bitter words would be too dangerous a gamble until she could gauge his temperament. Blackram was not unpredictable so much as he was an _enigma_ , even to some of the most established personages of the Undercity. She herself had been able to gauge little and less of him in the past, and after her previous interaction with him… She refused to meet his gaze, even as she could feel his eyes boring into her.

Blackram inhaled through his nose and let out the breath in a dramatic sigh. “Some broken ribs and limbs. Nothing that won’t someday heal, provided she keep her promise to stay well away from the catacombs. As such, I’d appreciate it if you give me what was meant for her. I’ll see that you’re compensated quite generously.”

“I don’t _care_ about the money.” A curt tone seeped into her voice before she could stop it. “As I said the last time we met, I will not work with you.”

 _The last time they met._ She still recalled the depth of the fervor in his eyes when he had turned on his own employer - when he had run through the very man who had paid him a fortune to murder her and seize her passages of the Undercity.

“There’s a bounty on your head, you know.”

She glanced up into his face before she could help it, before she could think better of it, and regretted it instantly upon being met with the full intensity of his cold, pale eyes. “How _dare_ you threaten me.”

“This is no threat, Sigrid. It’s a promise.” He leaned forward across the table, lowering his voice to a whisper so insistent that it chilled her blood. He had used that same whisper with her before. “I will take you somewhere where no one will be able to find you, far beyond the reach of those who would do you harm. And we’ll rule the Undercity together, you and I.”

“How many times must I tell you that my passages are useless without my express-”

“I’m not talking about the sigils, Sigrid; I _don’t care_ about any of that. I’ve told you before, haven’t I? All I want is to remake the Undercity. For you.”

Before she could open her mouth to speak, she felt his cold, white fingers run up beneath her skirts to her thigh, then grip her hard - possessively. The tables at the booths were not wide; to anyone observing the scene, they might as well have been enjoying a private conversation.

Fear took hold of her first, before the revulsion had so much as a chance to settle. She found herself frozen in her seat, even when she knew she should scream or fight. She had been a maid for nearly _twelve years_ , for Nymeia’s sake; this was hardly the first time she’d dealt with an unwanted touch. Yet she cursed her own inaction, her own disproportionate panic. Above all else, she battled with the prospect of drawing attention to herself above the Undercity, of doing anything that could be misconstrued and traced back to her and used to jeopardize her position in the palace. Only then Blackram slid his hand even further, his thumb brushing across the thin fabric of her-

She pulled a knife no longer than her little finger from the band of her stocking and held its razor-fine point to the back of his hand. “Your last warning. Don’t ever touch me again. There, or anywhere else.”

“Nymeia has a plan for us, Sigrid.”

She stabbed the knife downwards; in the instant Blackram drew his hand back, taking her blade with it, she leapt to her feet and made to vault over the empty bar counter. The black-clad Roegadyn intercepted her path before she could cross the floor and stood over her, arms at the ready to grab her in the event she tried to run again.

She refused to panic again. She forced herself to breathe, to accept the death he had given so readily to every other soul who had tried to cross him.

“It’s alright.” Blackram stood with casual grace, admiring the thin line of blood that had begun to trail from the center of his impaled right hand. He finished his languid approach, clasped her by the shoulders, and pulled her in close, so close she feared he was going to try to kiss her. She had not realized until that moment how tall he was. He lowered his mouth to her ear and breathed, “Remember what I said, my dear. Make ready. I’ll see you again soon.”

She fled the tavern the moment he released his grip, and neither he nor his men followed after her.

Her first course of action upon returning to her closet in the servants’ quarters that night was to don her sturdiest pair of trousers. At daybreak, when sunlight fell across the uniform she had shed onto the stone floor, she awoke from her uneasy sleep to see a dark stain of blood along the left breast of her uniform.


	3. The Washing-Woman's Way

The Undercity had a habit of changing.

Cave-ins were always a hazard, particularly around the limestone quarry, and all those who frequented the Undercity’s tunnels were aware that passages could change or close without even a moment’s notice. More than one unsuspecting sprat had been crushed beneath the weight of falling rock, or trapped behind a door that would no longer budge against the ever-shifting pressure of the capital above.

In certain seasons, when warm winds gathered across the lochs or when the first vestiges of winter at last settled upon the mountains, the passages themselves rang loud with moans and creaks brought about by the clashing of the elements. Each cycle of the moon brought about new monsters within the places where most refused to tread, creatures in keeping with the ancient superstitions and those of which nothing were known. This constant doubt, too, was part of life in the Undercity: vigilance against even the wind.

And then there were names, allegiances, territories; and these were no less significant for the fact that they were forged by men. A name was a crucial thing in the Undercity, as it was oftentimes the only thing a person might ever truly have to call one’s own, and a knife in a back in an alley one thought to be safe could kill far more surely than even a cave-in or a wraith. A name marked beginnings, belongings, bearings.

When a cutthroat who bore the name of the outcast - the sacrificial lamb, the black sheep - crowned himself king of the Undercity through the murder of a palace servant on Anshelm March of all places, every denizen of the Undercity took note.

And within the week, the path to the catacombs through which he carried the servant’s body became known as the Washing-Woman’s Way.


	4. Where Black Waters Ran

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for implied sexual assault, abduction, and suicidal ideation.

Sigrid did not remember the fall, nor the moment of her definitive breaking when at last she reached the bottom. She remembered only the aftermath of days passing one into another, all of them circumscribed entirely within the confines of Blackram’s chambers. His bed was lined with ill-fitting silken sheets, worn from what might once have been a deep dark green; for covers, he had heaps of thick furs taken from some great beasts, as black as the ones he and his men wore as mantles but much softer to the touch. He even fed her well, by the standards of the Undercity: a bowl of broth at least once a day to stave off the worst of her hunger.

And yet, for all the room’s comforts, it was a hell of a sort not even the gods could have devised.

She remembered whole days of being too weak and dazed to so much as lift her head, of whiling through the hours with no more will or sense in her thoughts than the shambling corpses that walked the lowest levels of the Undercity. She did not even have the means to cry out - not even when Blackram would take hold of her with unspeakable tenderness, when he would breathe whispers into her ear and run his hands along her emaciated frame with ever-greater intimacy.

And she remembered the way he spoke to her, even as the words themselves faded in and out of her dreams.

“Sigrid Keane.” He stroked back her hair with one hand - his right hand, weeping and infected from the very wound she had left him with in the Whitecap - and traced patterns along the bare skin of her hip with the other. “Only child of Tieger Keane. I imagine your youth was an unhappy time… given your father’s rather infamous love of drink.”

Her father had been a smith of some repute, often commissioned by the crown for particularly elaborate projects. As he had been one of only a few Hyuran smiths of the era to learn gemwork from the Ananta, his work had not come cheaply. On one occasion shortly after her tenth birthday, he had labored over a forge stoked to extraordinarily brutal temperatures for bells on end, only to emerge in the evening with an immaculate crystalline rose and present to her on bended knee.

“I remember little of my mother,” Blackram said. “Only that she tried to drown me in the lochs when I was still very young. My first memory.”

Her father had been stricter with her after her mother’s death, but neither had he resented her for any insubordinations, real or perceived. When she had awoken one morning at the age of seventeen to find that his heart had given out in his sleep, she had wept and cut off all her hair and gone through all the other stages of youthful grief - and then, one day, she had found that the pain had mostly faded. More than anything else, she missed her father most of all for what she had never known of him, for all of the questions that she had not had the fortune or foresight to ask. Though she often wondered at his mundane affairs or at royal secrets of eld, the day-to-day ache of his death was now more or less absent.

“After that, I lived in the Undercity, with a slew of would-be fathers of all different races and occupations. Every one of them ended up dead within a year.”

She could not have offered Blackram a response even if she had wished to. She could do little more than stare up at the stone ceiling of the cavern most days; conversation was a feat beyond her, yet Blackram filled her silences with such surety that she ultimately began to wonder if he now knew her better than she knew herself.

“I won’t be disappointed, should the gods never bless you with a child,” he said one day. “Ashley will be here before long, I imagine, once he’s done and seen all he needs to. I was much the same as him when I was his age: all fire and salt, but no direction. No ambition. I have higher hopes for him, and we both have _you_ to thank for leading me to him.”

At times, she remembered days when Blackram spoke of her under his breath whenever he thought her to be asleep - words _about_ her but never meant for her to hear.

Her inability to scream did not serve to dispel one whit of her terror.

Yet he showed her no ill will, and in many ways, that made him all the more terrifying. He never raised his voice, much less his fists - not even when his right hand at last turned black and necrotic from the wound she had dealt him and he struggled to perform his usual knifework, or when she awoke one day from a stupor to find herself wandering naked through the catacombs. He was always one step behind her, with a calm voice to whisper into her ear and a firm grip to lead her back into the waiting darkness.

And then, one day, Sigrid awoke with her heart pounding in a manner that she was no longer used to, beating so strongly that she feared she was about to meet the same end as her father. Her thoughts raced through the words of a prayer to Byregot, and the immediate recollection of something so removed from her present gave clarity to the fact that she was able to think more coherently than she had been able to for what felt like an age.

Perhaps more strangely, Blackram was gone. Even when she sat bolt upright in his bed, fighting the onset of dizziness and fatigue as she stared around his chambers, he was nowhere to be found. He had been with her in her every other waking moment - especially here, in the place he called “their” home.

It would not do to question the possibility of a trap, or to deny herself even the hope of an escape. She turned and fled through the only exit.

Sigrid’s fear gave her the strength to duck past the room where Blackram’s “knights” so often gathered for drinks or conversation; a cursory glance as she hastened past the door revealed that most of them were asleep, but she had no knowledge as to the time of day. She would need to find a torch to take from the wall-

_What are you doing, Sigrid Keane?_

The voice halted her steps, an ethereal tone that seemed to resonate against the edges of her mind. But the speaker was not Blackram.

“I’m leaving,” she whispered.

_For where?_

“H-Home.”

 _You don’t have a home, Sigrid_ , the voice said. _You have an empty house in the Noble District with a loft full of your late father’s belongings, and a closet in the palace basements that was given to the serving-girl who took over your duties six weeks ago. And you have a friend - one of your only true friends - rotting in an uncovered coffin in the catacombs above your head._

Her breath left her lungs as she remembered Brynhilde and her already turning body, the grotesqueness of something that had been so warm and welcoming in life. She owed it to Brynhilde to find her, to get what remained of her out of this hell, to return her to her boy-

She took off at a run before she could realize that she didn’t know where she was or how to make it to the catacombs, or that she had followed direction from a voice inside her own head. She ran and ran until the passage ended in a sheer cliff plummeting down to a dark river far below.

“There you are, Sigrid.”

She whirled around to find Blackram approaching ever so slowly, his tall frame crouched into a gesture of cautious placation.

“No.” Her voice was hoarse from disuse and the word came out as little more than a croak, yet she had to speak.

“Just breathe. The vera root extract is wearing off. You’re frightened.”

She would not beg, even in this state; she refused to give him that satisfaction. Yet neither could she command, or even begin to articulate the need that coursed through her in time with her pounding heartbeat. She spoke only of her distrust and confusion in the first two words that came to mind. “S-Six weeks.”

Blackram narrowed his eyes, clearly trying to parse out her meaning. “Six weeks? Darling - you’ve been here more than six _moons_.”

Though her knees trembled, she took a step backwards, toward the cliff and the river far below.

“Sigrid.” There was an edge to his voice for the first time - anger?

She turned from him, let go of everything, of herself-

“Sigrid, don’t-!” _Fear_. He was frightened.

Her feet left the edge.

A rush of air, a shock. Pain.

She opened her eyes. Magicked chains twisted all across her body, binding her in midair as she writhed. Beside her floated a figure clad all in black robes, with a mask like a blood-red brand across where its face would have been.

 _You should take better care to guard her, Blackram._ It was the same voice that had infiltrated her mind. _Let it be known that I will not intervene again._

“LET ME GO!” she screamed.

With a push of a clawed hand, the figure sent her back from the precipice, back over the ground. The chains dissipated and she fell once more into Blackram’s arms.

_I think it best you give her some… time alone._

Some new emotion crossed over Blackram’s face, a dark understanding and reluctance that chilled Sigrid’s blood for reasons she could not grasp, yet he nodded in response to the creature that addressed him. Sigrid’s efforts to leap into the river had taxed her to her limits, and her subsequent struggle against the ghostly figure’s chains had sapped the last reserves of her strength. She had no energy with which to oppose Blackram as he carried her away from the cliff, away from her death, and into the very catacombs she had meant to find.

Hanging from the moldering stone wall was a pair of manacles, into which Blackram shackled her with ease.

“No,” she sobbed.

“There _is_ a plan for us, Sigrid,” Blackram whispered. “Trust in it. For my sake.”

“No.”

“You won’t have to wait much longer.” He reached up to caress her face and she flinched - at the contact, and at the overwhelming stench of infection and rot and decay that wafted out, worse than ever before, from the wound at the center of his hand. “Very soon, I promise - we’ll _truly_ become one.”

As he made to leave, there came the flash of a red mask from the corner of the room, behind an open stone casket that could only hold what remained of her dearest friend.


	5. Crossroads of Rest

Though his heart still pounded from the recent chase, Ashley allowed himself a moment of respite. He slowed his steps to a jog and then a halt when he arrived at a crossroads close to Ala Mhigo above, in a place where the afternoon sunlight shone down through a row of glass panes embedded and concealed in a stretch of city street. A cool, pleasant breeze filtered through the tunnel. Ashley might have lowered his guard entirely to take in the sight, were his situation not so urgent; as it was, he stowed his surroundings as a memory for a place to revisit at another time - perhaps with Marco, or even with Élodie.

He waited in nearly breathless silence for a handful more minutes and heard nothing to indicate that his pursuers had followed him this far. Only then did he truly relax for the first time in all of that day. He set to pacing around the crossroads, never straying far from the illuminated panes, chuckling to himself at the sheer absurdity of his success.

He - with Marco’s help, yes, but he had done most of the planning and legwork - had made off with a warehouse key belonging to the leader of the Balam Ring. He, a novice at thievery and swordplay and all the other unlikely things his life had come to entail, had emerged victorious against one of the Undercity’s most established clans. Were the moment not so crucial to Marco’s overarching plan, he might well have chosen the crossroads as a site to bask in his victory for a while longer.

“Congratulations on your first successful heist.”

His would-be celebrations fell to pieces at the sound of that quiet voice. It was the same voice he heard in his worst nightmares - the same voice that told him, ever so calmly, that his mother would not be returning home that eve.

And it came from around the nearest corner.

He had no time to panic, to berate himself for not having heard the newcomer sooner. Ashley laid a hand on the hilt of his dagger and took in a focusing breath. In a single, fluid movement, perfectly rehearsed, he drew his weapon and rounded the bend in the crossroads.

The tunnel beyond was empty.

“Where the fuck are you, you bastard?!”

“Much further away than I sound.” Sure enough, the words contained an echo he had not detected before. “Though I commend you for your swift action, my boy. You’re a sharp learner.”

“What the-”

“But really, Ashley… _Marco_ , of all the sprats to team up with? How many summers has he seen - twelve?” Blackram gave a breathy sort of sigh that might have meant to double as a laugh. “You can do better. I’ve known it from the first.”

Ashley must have dropped his dagger, because his hands balled tighter and tighter until they were fists with nothing at all to strike at. A different tightness than exertion welled up within his chest. He suppressed the urge to lie down and cry, though even that impotent misery would doubtless be subject to his mother’s killer’s observation. “I want nothing to do with you!”

“Where have I heard that before?” Ashley did not know where Blackram might have heard that before, and so he said nothing. “Besides, it’s you and your new friend who have been pursuing _me_. If you’re-”

Blackram cut off his own words with a low, wheezing, rattling cough that resounded with sickening clarity throughout the tunnel. The sound sent a chill over Ashley - even as it came from a distance, and even after all the danger he’d thrown himself into that day.

The tunnel lay silent for several seconds after the coughing ended. At length, Blackram continued, though not with his previous taunt to his words. “I have much to show you.” His voice now rasped as if it pained him. “And even more to teach you - things that will make the Balam Ring’s defenses look like parlor tricks.”

“You murdering piece of-”

“I look forward to the day we’ll meet again in person, Ashley. In the meantime, I’ll let you run on home to Marco. I’ll be in touch.”

“FUCK OFF!”

But when the echoes of his shout faded to nothing against the stone of the Undercity, he was well and truly alone.


	6. Hope Obstructed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for sexual assault, abduction, and body horror.

_It’s all your fault._

Sigrid hung from her manacles like a marionette on worn strings, her back arched against the cold stone of the catacombs, watching Brynhilde Riot decay from afar.

_You brought this upon the both of you. You asked her for the help in the markets that she so willingly gave. If only you had kept to your loneliness, you could have spared her death and yourself this torment._

_If only you had not thought to love her._

Time passed thusly, with only the work of death to indicate the procession of days into weeks. Blackram’s knights would enter the tomb on occasion, always cowled and masked and gloved, to deliver her water from a skein. She fought them at first, straining against her wrought-iron bonds with all the impotent hate in her heart; she would deny them if it meant spitting her nourishment back into their anonymous faces. Such vain rebellions had proven too taxing to maintain when no sign came of their lord. She would not beg - not for her release, and certainly not for him.

 _You_ know _what he wants from you - yet still you long for him. Don’t you, Sigrid? There’s no need to be so cold._

She could not escape from her fate; she could not so much as turn her head from it. Her prayers to her father’s god grew feeble instead of fervent, her ribs jutted out prominent from beneath her paling skin - and those changes were still nothing compared to those that overtook her dead lover.

And as her resolve crumbled piece by piece, as surely as the stone to which she was chained, she began to wail.

_I’m so sorry._

_Please._

_Forgive me._

Her wordless shrieks resonated - throughout the catacombs, throughout the deepest reaches of the Undercity, she imagined - and if they could not take on a life of their own, if they could not bring the capital down around her head, they could at least send forth the last vestiges of the woman she had been.

When at last one of the visiting figures removed his cowl to reveal Blackram’s own face, her throat was raw from screaming, and her gut burned with need, and his dark gaze was hungry upon her-

“My dear,” he whispered. “I could never _not_ forgive you.”

He stepped forward and pulled her closer with his poisoned, shriveled hand, wrapping his arm tighter about her shackled body until the chains rattled their protest. It was the first she’d been touched since the start of her solitude, since he had carried her here himself on the orders of the red-masked figure whose voice sounded so very much like her innermost thoughts. The warmth of him was heady; a heave crept further down her throat as he drew himself ever nearer. His rotting flesh stank worse even than Brynhilde.

To think that Brynhilde lay so close while this _monster_ grasped at her.

Brynhilde would never have lain down for a tyrant. Sigrid, too, had once thought herself above such degradations, before everything down to her death had been stolen from her. The most she could do now - or perhaps the very least - was lift her head, confront her fate, meet her ruin impendent, unflinching.

She received Blackram’s fixated stare and saw herself then, through _his eyes_ , and hated the wretched thing she found there. She blinked in a vain effort to clear her head and beheld him as a blank-eyed corpse folded in a violet wing fashioned from half a shroud. She blinked again and he was upon her, so close that she retched, tracing one of his good fingers along her ribs, clawing his dead right hand upward to caress the small of her back-

A dark tumult washed over her at that contact, a current of thoughts and feelings and senses too heavy with fascination to be her own - Blackram’s mind bared to colonize her, supplant her, make her _theirs_.

_There we are._

She could no longer hope to free herself, not when she so scarcely recognized the half-dead idol draped across his arm. She could only observe, paralyzed in mind and body, as he offered up their intermingling threads to treat with something far beyond them both.

_You haven’t been Sigrid for a long time, anyroad._

_Would it be so terrible to let the last of yourself go?_

Pressing himself against her naked frame - he was warm, _so_ warm, the only warmth she’d known in far too long - Blackram reached to unlock the manacles binding her to the catacomb wall.

She stifled her screams with his mouth and met his contact in kind.

* * *

A storm raged in the city above, and Ashley was too far beneath the earth to determine whether the winter night had blown in rain or snow. He knew only the cold. He and Marco lay together on a thin, bare and stained mattress, the only shelter they’d been able to find for the night. Not even curling up together like children, arms thrown around each other, could abate their trembling; the cold sapped them of all their strength until it exhausted even the hope of sleep.

On such frigid nights, Ashley remembered his mother’s blanket, locked away in Marco’s safehouse. He would try to convince himself that he would not want it with him here, that he would rather spare it the indignity of the damp and mold; then he would look beside him to Marco’s thin body, so prone to shivering as it was, and would wish once again for even a minute of the comforts of home.

And above it all, the wind howled through the depths of the Undercity like a scream from the six hells.

“N-Never been this bad,” Marco mumbled through chattering teeth.

“The cold?”

“Nah. The wind.” Marco let out a loud groan, then, as if at last resigning himself to a restless night, gave a shrug. “They say you’re supposed to be able to sleep through anything down here.” As if in answer, another screeching cry tore through the stone tunnel. “‘Course, that’s a crock of shite.”


	7. Place of Free Words

“’S alright,” Marco assured him, crouching to duck through the tunnel exit first. “This is a good place to speak freely.”

Ashley followed closely behind Marco, just as he had done for the past several days. He still had his mother’s blanket draped across one shoulder and could count only on one hand the number of times it had fallen. Upon rightening himself, his eyes stung from a brighter glow than he’d seen in all his time in the Undercity so far. The tunnel opened into a cavern with a jagged mass of glowing blue stone - an entire wall of crystal that radiated pure aether.

Marco shot him one of his easy grins. “Isn’t it cool?”

“Yeah,” he breathed.

“It’s one of the few places in the Undercity where you can get a word in without being overheard. Listen.” Marco tilted his head up toward the ceiling; when Ashley followed suit, he could distinguish nothing, except for a rhythmic sort of wash.

“Is that… the lochs?”

“Mhm. Which means sound doesn’t travel out of this room. Crystal traps it on one end, and the water blocks it out on all the rest.”

It even seemed appropriately dry, and warmer by far than some of the other underground spots they’d holed up in. Of course, all of the water drips nearby were too saline to drink from, but they’d collected enough in their secondhand canteens to last them until tomorrow. “So what do we need to talk about?”

“Couple things.” Marco sat down against the crystalline wall, and Ashley did the same, careful to first ensure that doing so would not sully the blanket any further. “If you’re sure you want to help out with trailing after Blackram, it might be best to get you another name.” Ashley realized he must have made a face, because Marco shook his head. “Just for missions! Something you can recognize in a pinch, but also won’t give you away if I have to get your attention.”

Ashley stopped to consider his possibilities. “My mom always said my dad gave me a Thavnairian name. _Alttur_. It means something about a bull, like in the zodiac stories they tell in Dalmasca. But I don’t know if I’d respond to it if you were to yell it out.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of the point. Well, you can keep thinking about it. I probably won’t ask you to do anything dangerous for the next week at least.” Marco paused only for long enough to roll out his shoulders and take up a much more straight-backed position. “The other thing I wanted to talk about is that thing Blackram gave you.”

Ashley reached into his pocket and pulled out the strange, spoked charm the assassin had given him. He had been thinking of it often; he’d even taken it out at times when Marco was asleep or on a patrol, as if he could decipher its meaning simply by staring at it. “I don’t know,” he said again. “It might come to me. I really just haven’t-”

“It’s alright,” said Marco. “I’ve finally made contact with someone who can help us. _Two_ someones, though I don’t know how much we can rely on the second.” Marco had mentioned getting help from another Undercity personage, but the name escaped him the more he tried to recall it. “I think that’s her coming now.”

Ashley could hear nothing over the waves far above them, but sure enough, a skinny figure leaned through the opening at a crouch. She was an Elezen, Ashley realized when she straightened to her full height - a Duskwight probably no older than him with dark blue skin and black hair pulled into a loose braid. She was also dripping wet. Ashley averted his eyes while she readjusted her dress, pulling it away from her frame and wringing it free of moisture at the ends.

Marco, seemingly unperturbed, waved from across the cavern. “Head out for a swim?”

She swung her braid over her shoulder, where it fell across her back with a light splat. “Actually, yes,” she drawled. “A loudmouth of a Kingsguard on the White Aisle wouldn’t stop talking about some submerged wreck he found on his day off. I decided to see if it was as laden with treasure as he claimed.” Sure enough, as her dress settled, Ashley discerned a bright gold necklace gleaming at her collar. “Who’s the gawper?”

“This is Ashley.” Marco paused only for a moment to let out a snort of amusement - presumably at the word “gawper,” though Ashley had thought himself more than adequately composed in standing to properly greet her. “Ashley, meet Élo-”

“Élodie Fiel.” As Élodie fixed him with a tired-looking gaze, Ashley became acutely aware that he had not bathed in over a week, let alone changed his shirt. The girl voiced no other sentiment for their introduction and did not accept the hand he offered for her to shake. “And while we’re here,” she said, gesturing around the interior of the sound-protected cavern, “the only reason _I’m_ here is because I owe Marco a favor.”

“‘Bout four favors, really,” Marco called.

“ _And_ because Blackram has no idea how to maintain any kind of normalcy and it’s getting out of hand. It’s driving everyone on my end up the wall.”

“Well, then,” said Ashley. “We’ll… try to stay out of your way.”

Élodie only rolled her eyes at him before returning her attentions to Marco. “What’s the plan, then?”

“Ashley had an encounter with Blackram up in the Quarter. We’re hoping you could help us make some sense of it. Ashley, can you show her the thing?”

As requested, Ashley took out the copper emblem from his pocket and passed it over to Élodie. She accepted it with some interest; she turned it over in her hands several times and even raised it to her face to sniff it. “No poison. No corruptions.”

“No, nothing like that. Blackram just gave it to him.”

“He told me I could use it to find him,” Ashley offered.

Élodie glared - whether at him or the trinket or both, he could not be certain. “It might be some sort of map. If it is, it’s of no part of the Undercity I’ve ever seen.” She pushed the it back into Ashley’s hands so roughly that he nearly poked the flesh of his palms on one of its prongs.

“You think it could be a sigil?” said Marco.

At that, Élodie hesitated. “I didn’t want to say it.”

“Sigil?” Ashley turned to look at her and Marco in equal measure. “What’s a sigil?”

“Think of it like a key.” Marco leaned himself up on his knees. “Remember when we were up in that area yesterday - the limestone quarry? And we passed by all those doors that I said we couldn’t open?”

Ashley nodded.

“We couldn’t open them because they were bound with sigils - a sort of magick that keeps them locked.”

“In the old days,” Élodie interjected, “they were dried flowers, or illustrations on slips of paper. Now they can be made of just about anything.”

“They’re used to lock and unlock different parts of the Undercity. Sometimes it’s enough to have the actual sigil in your hand and hold it up to the door; other times, you have to know a spell, or get one of the old wielders to transfer their power to you. But if Blackram gave you a sigil… well.”

Élodie had begun to pace around the cavern, casting little droplets of salt water from her hair and limbs as she did so. “But why would he just give away a _sigil_ , of all things? Granted, the man’s as mysterious as anything, but… it wouldn’t make sense for someone who’s been working for nearly a year to build up his empire. And why give it to this one? He wouldn’t even know how to _use_ it.”

The scathing tone in Élodie’s voice cut him. As childish as it may have been, he could not bring himself to speak of why Blackram had chosen him as a target for his generosity - not with the chance that Élodie could choose to be cruel or impatient about that as well.

Neither, it seemed, would Marco be the one to reveal his secrets. He simply cast Élodie a frustrated glance while she paced, then pushed himself to his feet. “Right,” he said. “I’ll let you go, if this is so painful. How does this sound: Ashley and I’ll keep an eye out for any combinations of tunnels that look like the spokes of that crest. Can you let us know if you find a door that might be locked with that sigil?”

“I’ll do my best.” And though her voice was still low and unenthused, Ashley had no doubt that she would do as she said. “I suppose I’ll see you around, Marco. Gawper.”

As she made her exit, Ashley listened more carefully; this time, he could make out the faintest traces of confident footsteps receding from the tunnel. “Was I really that bad?” he posed when at last the sounds had vanished entirely.

“Sorry to break it to you,” said Marco, who strode over to give him a hard thump on the back. “But you were.”


	8. Nameless Dark Oblivion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for body horror, sexual assault, suicidal ideation, and implied child abuse.

_We are tired and cold, and we miss Brynhilde so dearly. Our bed at least is warm; still, our mind strays back to the empty stretch of catacombs where Brynhilde lies._ _We yearn for her son to come to us, and we hope he will stay well away._

_We drink the vera tonic daily. It obliterates_ her _every independent thought. It dulls the edges of_ her _grief - renders it passive, if not benign. To_ him _it grants clarity, and the much-sought and temporary reprieve of_ her _submission. It dulls the pain as more of_ his _skin sloughs off._

_It is easier in many ways to be us. The Ascian hounds us far less when we are one. In this state, to live apart is unthinkable; to wither together is be ever more complete._

_It is in many other ways harder still to exist as one. We would end_ her _life, if we could._ She _would rather die than endure another moment of_ his _rapturous love. The very notion propels_ him _to cling to_ her _ever tighter._

_We cannot rule the Undercity like this. Not yet._

_Not yet._

_And if we sleep apart, we remember none of it. We can no longer distinguish dreams from sleep, nor nightmares from reality._

_When we roam, we gather red lilies - Galbanas - grown in the deepest parts of the Undercity, where long-buried paving-stones give way to ancient earth. They are a comfort and a torment to us, the last thing we remember from when both our mothers died._ She _had vases of them delivered to_ her _in droves, until_ her _father drunkenly begged for_ her _to do away with them all._ He _remembers them as the last thing_ he _saw before_ his _mother lowered_ him _beneath the surface of Loch Seld and held_ him _there until_ he _thrashed._

 _We run our hands along what once was_ her _body and still we weep for what lies before and behind us._ His _lust drives our wants;_ her _tears sate our hunger. We are the only salvation left to us in this world. We cannot bring ourself to hate_ him _or to pity_ her _._

_There is only the agony, the confusion, the longing - this nameless, dark, conjoined oblivion._


	9. A Knight Sells His Sword

“You’re late,” Blackram pointed out as the blacksmith made his approach upon old gray Undercity flagstones.

“Wasn’t my fault,” he retorted. “Fucking Silverbrands swarming in the limestone quarry.”

“They do that. I hope you didn’t lose your coinpurse in the process.”

The blacksmith reached with massive, callused hands into both his pockets; he unearthed one heavy sachet, then a second. Only then did Blackram shift aside his cowl at the waist to reveal the katana upon his left hip. The blue glow of the salt lanterns played across the lacquered sheath like a marble.

To his surprise, Blackram removed the blade from his side and held it out for closer observation, going only so far as to draw the sword a hand’s breadth. That motion was more than enough to offer up a glimpse of the initials of its maker - _TK_ \- in the exact place where the blacksmith himself so often marked his own weapons.

This was a Keane Masamune - one of only three ever crafted, and the last still remaining in Ala Mhigo.

He had been expecting a clever fake, or something of passable quality to justify the expense. An artifact such as this was priceless - worth far more than the twenty thousand gil Blackram had asked for it.

He could espy little of Blackram’s face from beneath his furred hood, but the assassin took the gil without fanfare. He counted the coin and did not linger over it, as would one who lusted for money. The blacksmith could sense in him only a dispassionate need - like that of a man in wanting of food or shelter or companionship.

Not for the first time, a chill raced up the blacksmith’s spine as he considered the ease with which Blackram or one of his number might simply kill him and take back the blade before he’d even left the abandoned underground markets. And Blackram hesitated, it seemed: he stared down at the blade with - regret? reluctance? - before shoving it into his hands.

“We’re done here,” the Undercity lord said. “Our terms have not changed. Don’t speak to anyone of this - and if you seek to sell the sword again within the year, be it in Ala Mhigo or Ul'dah or Thavnair, it’ll be driven through your head.”

“Right.”

“That’s a warning, Southern Flame.”

His throat went dry. Blackram had said from the first that this was to be a wholly anonymous transaction. The blacksmith clutched the katana unceremoniously in both his practiced hands and - for the first time in his life - fled as fast as his legs could carry him until he reached the capital above.

Whether or not he survived to see the morrow, this would be his last deal in the Undercity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Southern Flame belongs to my friend Bull!


	10. Noble Gold and Silk

“It’s good to see you,” said Élodie. The girl had brought flowers - an array of Rhalgr’s gold - and as Sigrid accepted them, she lifted them to her face to take in their scent: wild, fresh, shaped in the terrain and breezes of the Peaks.

“So kind of you,” she said, and meant it. Yet for all the clutter in the house, she could think of no vase in which to place them; instead, she held them upon her lap and resolved to find a worthy carrier at the market. “And I appreciate your coming.”

“You’re truly leaving Ala Mhigo, then?”

Sigrid had found her resolve a week ago, and the truth of it had yet to fully sunk in. She had made few preparations for the house - her linens sat unwashed, the pantry remained full, and her parents’ relics sat untouched in the loft - with the result that the place looked much as it had when her father had still been alive. Sigrid had wondered for a time if the ghosts of the past would abate if she were to live under another roof, and she had gone so far as to find lodgings in an inn to put the theory to the proof. Yet her dreams had only grown worse. Better to imagine her father’s curses and bellows from the basement forge than the whisper of an Undercity lord stirring her from her dreams.

“I _must_ , Élodie.” The words pained her, but they carried with them the promise of liberation. She could not stave off what she knew she must do because it would hurt.

“Who else knows? Ashley, I assume, but-”

“You’re the first I’ve told. I meant to send word to Marco later today.”

Élodie tucked a strand of her dark hair, so very much like Sigrid’s own, behind her ear with a shy smile. “…I’m honored,” she said at long last. She carried herself differently in private, with a youthful sort of slouch. Sigrid had once been much the same: accustomed to stooping through Undercity passages, or else lowering herself for the shorter men in her vicinity. Hopefully Élodie, too, would grow out of such habits; Sigrid’s heart clenched with the knowledge that she would not be around to see for herself.

A silence drew out between them, and Élodie did not sit. She stared around at the crates stuffed with tomes and the faded rug and everywhere except at her, and her pale eyes had begun to fill with tears.

“What is it?” Sigrid asked her gently.

“Was it not enough?” Élodie blurted out. “Was it all for nothing?! After so long, why do you have to-”

“Because, Élodie,” she replied, as firmly as she could muster, “there is a world far beyond Ala Mhigo that I could not even have hoped to conceive of as a servant. My mother was a learned, well-traveled woman; I have always sought to follow her example in that regard. I’ve gathered excerpts from her diary - records of the places she loved best, and others she never saw.” Places with names like Voor Sian Siran and the Sea of Spires. “I wish to see them as well, before I am too old and too afraid to take the chance.”

“It doesn’t have to do with-”

Sigrid shook her head, a gesture sufficient to cut off the remainder of Élodie’s sentence. “If it has to do with _anyone_ in the city, it’s Theodoric. Though I suppose I should thank him. _He_ was as good a reason as any to go into retirement.”

Élodie offered up a smile, though the expression did not reach her reddening eyes.

“Come here.” Sigrid took up the flowers from her lap as she stood, and opened her arms; Élodie threw her own around her, and her lanky frame shook from unshed sobs. “I’ll have to write to someone of my adventures, won’t I? Marco’s whereabouts change by the bell and Ashley hardly ever responds, so it’ll have to be you.”

“I want to hear from you every week.”

“You know I won’t be able to promise that.” She hesitated, still holding the young woman close. It was perhaps the warmest embrace she could recall in her recent memory, at least since her stint in the Undercity. “…I had hoped to leave the house to you.”

Élodie did not break the contact, yet the whole of her body stiffened. “I know what you mean to do.”

“Élo-”

“It isn’t going to work. I’m embedded now - living in the Undercity full-time.”

“Élodie, please.”

“I’m _making_ my living, for the first time in my life, and I love it.”

Sigrid held the girl at arm’s length, staring her straight in the eye for a time before she spoke again. “I, too, loved the Undercity when I was a girl. Even when I was your age. I _hungered_ for it - for its thrills, its dangers, and the things it could show me about myself. But it steeps you in things that no woman as compassionate as you should ever have to endure.” Élodie made a noise that might have been a cough, but Sigrid resolved to maintain her contact. “Whatever the Undercity offers, it comes at the cost of a life full of bitterness. It is too much for any one person to change alone, or even to try. I… I meant to step away from it all, even my mother’s sigils, when I found Brynhilde. I say this knowing that I would never seek to order you onto any given path, but I hope that you will listen and heed me.”

“I am listening,” said Élodie. “I listen, and I will remember. But I will not accept this house.”

Sigrid’s heart sank.

“Leave it to Ashley,” Élodie continued. “Or Marco. Or even the both of them. They’ll appreciate it, and they’ll put it to good use.”

 _Leave it to Ashley._ For all her love for Brynhilde, the idea of giving her late partner’s son a house to replace the one her death had taken away had not occurred to her. The suggestion settled somewhere deep in her gut, along with all of her suspicions that she was now giving up the last of her father’s hopes for her - and she nodded her agreement.

* * *

The captain shuffled across the _Merlose_ ’s deck, uneasy despite their mooring. Madelaine Lachance could hear her steps all the way from the bow. The woman’s stealth had been legendary only a few moons ago, to the extent that many wondered if she could teleport throughout the ship at will for the purpose of delivering rebukes; yet her fall had taken much and more, including her mobility, and her full recovery was yet an uncertain thing.

Madelaine breathed out a little sigh but turned to greet her superior nonetheless. “So much for staying in bed.”

“I ran out of water and didn’t want to trouble you.” Sure enough, as the captain approached unsteadily toward Madelaine’s vantage in her favorite silk dressing gown, she held a full glass between her bony brown hands. “Lovely morning.”

And it was at that, for nothing on Hydaelyn could compare to a sunrise in the Diadem. The region had an atmosphere of its own, as unpredictable as any sea; the aether all above and around them offered different marvels with each waking and with every turn of the head. That morning, the day dawned in a burst of heavy pinks and violets, like the bloom of some all-encompassing flower.

It was only the two of them aboard the _Merlose_ , at least for now. The crew had been small from the first, and comprised entirely of women - less through strict doctrine like the Sanguine Sirens, and more through a string of pleasant coincidences. The other crew members had all departed within the past fortnight, however, to make their preparations for other ventures - leaving only a hold full of plunder, the captain, and Madelaine in the unexpected position of being first mate without any inclination of how long she herself was to remain aboard.

“Where to from here?” Madelaine asked. “Ala Mhigo?”

The captain tilted her head, as if to listen to the wind, but she shook her head. “Not yet.”

And for a time, that was all she said as they watched the aetherial sunrise and sipped at their respective drinks. Madelaine was content to stand in silence, a buffer to the northerly winds as the captain’s silvered hair whipped across her shoulders.

“Thank you,” said the captain at last. “For accommodating all of my dallying. And I hope you know you’re under no obligation to follow me to Ala Mhigo.”

Madelaine shrugged. “Someone has to help you bring the _Merlose_ into port.”

“Perhaps so,” the captain replied dryly, as if unconvinced. “A note of sentimentality, then: of all the regrets I’ve carried throughout my life, perhaps the heaviest of them all is that I often did not express thanks to those I loved before the chance to do so was long past.”

“That _is_ sentimental.”

“Blame it on this beautiful sunrise. Now, when was the last time you dropped a line to that ranger of yours?”

Madelaine whirled around to the captain in time to see a lock of hair obscure a very self-satisfied smirk playing across her Highlander features. “Don’t you try and turn this back onto me.”

“I’m quite serious.”

Madelaine rolled her eyes. “I imagine now that Ala Mhigo’s been freed, he’ll be returning at the rearguard.” Timing had never been among Sairsel Arroway’s virtues. “What about you? Who’s waiting for you back in the capital?”

“No one anymore.” Somehow, it was the definitiveness with which the captain spoke that struck Madelaine, more so than the bitter reality she conveyed. “Which means that while I _may_ consider paying a visit to your good friend the Grand Steward, I’m in no hurry to return.”

If the stories were true, Ashelia Riot had led her force against the Garlean viceroy himself. Perhaps that tenacity would be enough for her to handle whatever business the captain had with her.

“I’ll be here until you’re ready,” Madelaine promised, and found herself meaning it. “But we’ll be going nowhere until you park your arse back into bed.”

Again the captain scoffed, though she began her slow retreat back to her cabin. “Oh, very well. Boss me around all you’d like, while it’s just the two of us; I imagine you’ve earned it.”

Madelaine fired up the _Merlose_ ’s propellers and charted their course through the resplendent color before them, and only much later did it occur to her that the captain had expressed her love in no uncertain terms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Madelaine Lachance is a character from my dear friend Sammish!


	11. Weapons Not Allowed

Hawthorne unfurled the map and laid it out against the hard cobbles. The four of them each took up a corner - and for the first time that day, Ashley felt as though his presence were at least somewhat useful as he set down the lantern for better reading.

“There you go. Ignore the red.” Sure enough, the map was marred by red wax scribbles of just about the foulest words Ashley could imagine, replete with several informative doodles. “A rough map of the Undercity.”

“Very rough,” Gelva added.

“Very rough,” Hawthorne agreed. “So don’t stake your life on it. Though I guess if you do, you won’t get to come crying to either of us when you die. So there’s that.”

“And Blackram’s territory is-”

“Black,” said the twins in unison.

Portions of the map had been shaded in wax of a much darker color, so dark that it very nearly blotted out the details of whatever had been there previously. The sheer volume of how much had been lost to that dark scrawl sent a shiver through Ashley - one that did not go unnoticed by their new companions.

Marco let out a low whistle, running a single finger along the largest surface marked in black. “Somehow feels a lot worse to see it like this,” he muttered.

“Gelva and I have a bet with our cousin Hamund to see how much territory Blackram loses this year,” said Hawthorne.

Ashley resolved to memorize as much of the geography as he could - the better to find his way around the place that was, little by little, becoming a twisted sort of home. The feat was nearly as difficult as telling the twins in front of him apart. Garbed though they were in vastly dissimilar clothes, and though Hawthorne smiled often and Gelva decidedly did not, he found himself mistaking them nonetheless.

“Can we borrow this?” asked Marco.

“‘Course not - it’s a family heirloom.” In the beat it took for Ashley to blink, Hawthorne continued, “Fuck’s sake. Sure. Not like I’m using it at the temple.”

“Speaking of-” As Ashley relinquished his hand, Marco deftly rolled up the map, scribblings and all, and stowed it away in the waistband of his trousers. “Ashley. You should have a go with Hawthorne.”

Hawthorne’s face shifted into a disbelieving, gap-toothed smile; from behind her brother’s shoulder, Gelva rolled her eyes. “You’re serious?”

“He’s a monk in training, and one of the best fighters our age.” Marco stepped back only a few paces until he reached the massive crates lining the walls, leaning against one with his hands folded behind his head.

“Uh, Marco, I’m not sure if-”

And Hawthorne sprung, leaving Ashley only a fraction of a second to dive out of the way of the boy’s extended fist. Hawthorne staggered - and when he righted himself, he was smiling wider than ever. “Shit!” he exclaimed with great joy, then attacked again. This time, Ashley caught the blow on his upper arm and was knocked off balance. Hawthorne pressed the offensive; Ashley landed hard on the stone floor, sending a jolt of pain up his side. Only with that most certain defeat did Hawthorne give him the space to stand up, dust himself off, and try again.

“So you’re… a Fist in training,” Ashley said, aiming a jab at Hawthorne’s shoulder. Hawthorne responded only with another wicked grin and a roll of his neck as he took the blow. “Why leave the Undercity?”

Hawthorne swung one of his feet out to send Ashley flat onto his arse. “Wanna tell him, Gelva?”

The girl, arms still folded across her chest, only shook her head. “No.”

Hawthorne did not continue the rebuffed attempts at conversation; he channeled more energy into his sparring, particularly as Ashley made himself harder to reach. Ashley darted and parried and generally made as much of a nuisance of himself as he could, and that seemed to be enough to keep some kind of upper hand, until Hawthorne delivered a single punch that sent him sprawling back onto the impossibly hard cobbles. He wheezed, wind knocked thoroughly from him, and reached for the wooden pole he’d brought into the twins’ little alcove-

At once, Gelva’s hands clamped around his wrists and forced him back, offering Hawthorne the means to land a heavy kick upon his side.

Only then did Marco join the melee. Ashley did not even see him tackle Gelva, but he heard her grunt with the impact and felt her weight roll from off of him. From there, the struggle became an all-out battle - not a fight to the death but not entirely good-natured - until Marco and Hawthorne emerged with nearly identical grins and bruises, clapped each other on the shoulders, and made to go their separate ways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Silverbrand twins, Hawthorne and Gelva, belong to my friend Elliot!


	12. Larder for a Lean Winter

Ashley had at first wondered why, in the dead of winter, the woman named Elza wore only a set of thin undergarments. Then she had welcomed him and Marco into her basement abode, where the air was hot from a vented cooking stove and heavy with the scent of fresh food.

The stuffy nook bore the trappings of a home: upon parts of the stone wall lay curtains hanging from windowless rods, and a threadbare rug sat sprawled out like a dead thing near the door. Before living nearly a year in the Undercity, Ashley might have thought such attempts at comfort futile.

Elza wore her dark hair down across her bare shoulders, and somehow it retained its shape throughout the hours he and Marco lingered in her company. Ashley’s mother’s hair had required far more maintenance by comparison: she’d often tied it in a simple plait, the better to keep it out of her face when she ran. On the rare moments when she would let it down, it would curl and crimp at even the scarcest trace of humidity. Elza labored over the steaming pot without a single lock moving out of place - and though he knew it was strange of him to be transfixed on a woman’s hair, he could not avert his gaze.

Elza tapped her ladle against the side of the stewpot several times in succession; the noise jarred him from his reverie. So too did he notice for the first time the wraps she wore around her forearms like a Fist of Rhalgr; wound between them were charms and amulets and other trinkets that jingled with every intense movement she made.

“Take as much as you’d like,” she said.

It was the first Ashley had heard those words in the Undercity, and he had no intention of taking them for granted. Following Marco’s lead, he accepted the wooden bowl Elza handed to him but filled it only halfway. Fortunately, the stew was hearty, rich with all sorts of indulgences he had nearly forgotten during the long winter: salty broth, vegetables still crisp, and the unmistakable tang of beef.

“Thank you,” he said, and Marco echoed the sentiment with a full mouth.

Elza nodded but said naught else for a time. She swigged down the contents of a metal flask and stared around at the basement interior with the paranoid eye of one who had not been camped there for upwards of four weeks. Her open suspicion came as something of a relief; it was a sign that she meant to care for them, even while their heads were down.

“I don’t want to hear of either of you going hungry again. Do you understand me?”

Marco gave two sharp nods, still spooning down stew in the biggest gulps possible. “Loud and clear, Elza.”

She shook her head. “You’ve both got to keep giving Blackram hell. For all of us.”

The name nearly caused Ashley to choke on his food. After several coughs, Marco readied a hand to thump him on the back, but the need subsided. “Who is ‘us’?”

“Rikken.” The name left her faster than Ashley had been expecting. “The bastards took Rikken. In the dead of night, too. Didn’t bother to wake me up. He just… went out for a piss, or a drink. Then he was gone.”

“Shite,” Marco whispered. Ashley, in solidarity, said, “Fuck.”

“And Raz left that same week. Though he went to them on his own, even after Rikken. There’s better work to be had under Blackram nowadays, or so he told me.” She blinked once, twice at the ground between her feet. “Stay here tonight,” she said, somewhat abruptly. “Rhalgr knows there’s room.”

But Marco shook his head. “We shouldn’t impose,” he said. Ashley found himself agreeing with Marco’s unstated reasoning: if Blackram’s knights had slipped into this place once before, they could almost surely do so again.

“Get some rest. The closet behind you has a crawlspace to some rich bastard’s wine cellar. I’ll keep watch for you both and tell you when to run.” And only with that settled did she take up a single ladle’s worth of broth for herself into a cracked mug and sip at it in relative silence. Marco merely shrugged and sprawled himself out upon the mattress where they sat, yet for all his supposed ambivalence to the prospect of shelter, he dozed off within minutes.

“Watch yourself,” said Elza as Ashley fumbled with the covers. “He’s said not a word of his demands, especially to us other lords. But it’s _you_ he’s after.”

“How do you know-”

“He’s taking hold of the places where boys like you find your rest - alleys, storehouses, cellars. He’d have the whole Undercity by now if he weren’t spending manpower trying to flush you out.”

He opened his mouth to reply but realized he had no clear idea of what to say as he bundled himself up in the space where her family had all too recently lain. He swallowed, breathed, and closed his mouth again. Marco gave a snuffling snore from beside him. And though Elza spoke not another word for the remainder of the evening, neither did she give up her vigil.


	13. Hall to a New World

Before aught else, Sigrid knew the cold. She awoke face-up with an aching head, and with a chill that ran across her shoulders and all down her spine in harsh pinpricks: tiny, rough, uneven bits of gravel that needled their way into her bare skin the more she shifted against them. When she opened her eyes, her blurred vision gave way to the darkness in her surroundings and the pain all over.

Muted voices murmured from an indiscernible distance away. When the stabbing in her skull and the dulling ache throughout her body had quieted enough, she focused first on finding meaning in their words. The voices were male, all of them, and they spoke of covering tracks. They spoke of reactions and retaliations, and of monitoring for blowback from the Corpse Brigade after the marketplace.

_The marketplace._

She had gone out to the marketplace in the morning, on orders to procure some bolts of Thavnairian wool for a new jacket for the king. She’d had too many other chores lined up in the afternoon to spend her thoughts on idle matters, and despite the clear skies, the wind had brought an unpleasant chill that left her eager to be done with her tasks. She had been distracted in those crucial moments.

She had had time to whisper only the briefest of warnings before the bolt.

She still heard the thrum of the crossbow in each pulse of her pounding head. She counted the beats, one by one, until the twinge in her neck subsided, and she turned her head to the side-

-only to be met with Brynhilde Riot’s lifeless eyes staring back at her.

She was screaming now, sobbing, and the voices around her closed in. Someone reached down over her and held both sides of her face, and she struggled against the touch.

“Sigrid.”

She was cold, so unbearably cold, and she was never going to be warm again.

“Thank you for being patient.”

“YOU BASTARD! HOW _DARE_ YOU!”

“It’s alright, Sigrid. Breathe, now.”

But Brynhilde lay dead on her other side, dead at the hands of this monster.

The moment Blackram’s face came into focus above her, she reached up with a strength born of impulse and fury and made to tear at every ilm of skin within her reach. But her fingers scratched impotently against him, and he evaded the worst of her strokes. He had dulled her nails during her unconsciousness.

Now she could truly see how he had come to take over so much of the Undercity in a matter of moons. He left not a single detail to chance.

And now Brynhilde was dead. Her son, _gods_ , her son was orphaned.

She had to find Ashley, had to-

In the instant before Blackram tied a red sash across her eyes, a drop of warm blood, weeping from a wound in the center of his right hand, fell onto her forehead.


	14. Bazaar of the Bizarre

The underground market held scores of folk, more people in one place than Ashley had seen since arriving in the Undercity. Collected in the dim blue subterranean light were those of all races and ages to take advantage of the roving market’s inherent neutrality. He saw a mercenary covered in swords with a head like a lion, though it could well have been a convincing mask; he saw merchants much like those in the city above, albeit hawking far more questionable wares; he saw performers in little enclaves engaged in all manner of singing and dancing and acrobatics; he saw courtesans, none of whom paid him any heed; he saw a runner who might well have been his mother’s double carrying a basket of overripe fruit-

Élodie elbowed him - hard - in the side. “You’re gawping again.”

“Fuck off,” he muttered. They passed beneath another lantern and its blue light faded brilliantly into the flush of her face, and any other retort he had to give was lost.

“Quit it, you two,” Marco snapped. “There’s our target.”

Their target was covered from head to toe in rags, much like any other Undercity-dweller, and had gathered around him his own assortment of sleeping bags and other personal effects. Ashley could make out no other details; the man’s hair lay sprawled across his face in a mass of mats, the better to obscure a pair of bright eyes.

“Got that thing I asked for?” the man slurred. He did not look up to any of them when he spoke.

Marco nodded once to the man and once again to Ashley; Ashley, following that cue, procured the ring of keys he’d pickpocketed from the chief of the Balam Ring. He did not relinquish them.

“Well, don’t just wave ‘em around. Give 'em here.”

“You can tell us how to find-”

“I can, and I’m not saying his fuckin’ name. If you little shites had any sense, you wouldn’t either. Now hand over the godsdamned-”

“He’s not handing them over until we’re happy with what you tell us,” Marco retorted.

“And you’d better hurry,” Élodie added. “The Ring are due in at any minute.”

The man muttered a few muffled curses for each of them, then cast a longing glance up at the keys. He ground his teeth once more and huffed. “Fine. You want the bad news first, or the good news?”

“Which-fucking-ever,” Ashley snapped. “Just get on with it.”

“Aren’t we pleasant.” The man scratched at his hairline, sending a shower of dandruff or caked grime across his tattered robe. “Bad news, then: this black sheep o’ yours don’t have a headquarters. Not anymore. He’s deposed enough lords to use their troves of weapons, information… I’m sure you’ve seen his knights staked all throughout the Undercity - an’ how, with his caches, he don’t need a headquarters.”

“Any recent takeovers?” asked Marco.

The man hesitated for the first time, then nodded slowly. “…Elza.”

Ashley had been expecting just another name in a sea of intelligence that went above his head. The name hit him like a punch to the gut. Elza had given him and Marco a full bowl of food each in the dead of winter and had asked for nothing in return. She and Marco had swapped jokes and anecdotes like family until their histories had become his too. Ashley glanced over to his friend, but aside from a furrowed brow, Marco offered no reaction at all.

“And what became of her?” Élodie demanded.

“Come now,” the man insisted. “Don’t have time to get into all that.”

One woman pressed another up against the wall for a kiss directly beside them, both giggling with every rise of their hips. The group waited for them to disperse before continuing.

“But!” The interruption prompted an almost cheerful change to the man’s tone. “If'n you’re inclined to lose hope, I’ve some idea o’ the bastard’s whereabouts. Down along the old catacombs, there’s a door to passages older still, back behind the embalmers’ chambers. I’ve personally seen your black sheep going in and out through that door - and that more than once.”

Ashley glanced over again to Marco, who nodded. Only then did Ashley pass the keys into the man’s robe, careful not to allow them to jingle. The man beamed a gap-toothed smile.

“Let’s go.” Élodie was eyeing a rack of jewelry, most of it too fine to have been anything but stolen. Behind that wooden scaffolding, a door opened, and from it emerged Ronobal - the head of the Balam Ring himself.

Their target fiddled with the front of his trousers, therein to stow the ring of keys; Marco turned away pointedly. “Godsspeed!” the man called, raising a hand in a mock salute. “And may you never again need to count your sheep!”

“Absolutely useless,” Élodie snarled under her breath as the three of them stalked away. “We’ve checked the catacombs in every one of our sweeps - and the path behind the embalmers’ chambers caved in nearly three years ago. You’d have been right to renege on your deal for that drivel.”

“If nothing else,” Marco retorted, “we know what we’re up against.”

Ashley and Marco stalked off through the market, though Élodie peeled away a short ways away as she saw another Duskwight with whom to connect. With her gone, Marco grew more and more somber with each stall they passed; by the time they reached a seller of old books and magicked tomes in a place where Ashley could hear a stream flowing, his friend’s face had settled into a deep frown.

“What is it?”

Marco shook his head. “We’re worse off than I thought. Elza’s half a legend. Things’ll go downhill quick with her gone.”

“It just means we’ll have to stay on our toes.”

It was the understatement of the era, coming from him - and it failed utterly to scratch at the emotional toll of the loss of one of their few allies. Marco clapped him on the back nonetheless. “Damn right. And you’re doing great at that so far. Speaking of which, get your knife ready.”

No longer did Ashley need to turn to hear, even through the bustling market and nearby stream, two pairs of heavy footfalls racing in their direction among the crowd.

“I thought you said fighting’s forbidden here.”

“It is. But that’s not going to stop them.”

In unison, he and Marco turned to parry the impending strikes of two Balam Ring blades.


	15. Path of the Children

“What is it you want?” Élodie whispered to him. “More than anything else in the world?”

The path where they were sheltering from the Blackram Knights was dark, save for the soft, dim blue glow of crystals. Somewhere further along the tunnel, saline water dripped in an unsteady rhythm. One boy, his thin frame stretched out along the wall, sneezed in his sleep. And Élodie had the head of another child, no more than five years old, resting close-eyed and open-mouthed against her shoulder. She was not looking over him but gazing upward, toward the tunnel ceiling, looking for all the world to be thoroughly contented as she carded a hand through the child’s hair.

His tongue and jaw felt leaden, clumsy, incapable of conveying something so necessary as his hopes with any sort of grace.

“Uh,” he said. When that lone sound failed to dispel the serenity of the moment, he struck up the nerve to continue. “Don’t tell Marco?”

Her fingers paused in their ministrations, but her expression took on no confusion that he could see. “Of course.”

“I’d… like to live aboveground.” He spoke haltingly, for fear that to say those words with confidence would be to betray all that he had gained and grown from while under the earth, throughout the past year of his life. He did not say “again,” but it echoed nonetheless against his ears amid the stillness of the tunnel. “That’s not weird, is it? It’s not… wrong. What I mean is, you and Marco are my best friends, I’d never want-”

“No,” said Élodie. “It’s not weird, or wrong. Lots of the others say the same. Even the ones who grew up here.”

“I… I see.” He took a deep breath, his own private sigh of relief. “What about you? What do you want more than anything else?”

“To get people to remember.”

He wondered for a moment if he had misheard, his brain still fixated as it was on his own potential follies; he might easily have failed to process the last of whatever she had meant to say. When she did not elaborate, he asked, “Remember… who? Or what?”

He had the impression that Élodie might have shrugged, were it not for the child at her shoulder. “Everything, I suppose.” Slowly, she closed her eyes to the ceiling’s glow. “People here fight and die and grow and change every day. Only the more that gets built up, the more gets washed away - and the stones keep better records than we do.”

“You want to keep records? Of the Undercity?” His heart swelled with pride at the very prospect.

“Maybe. Or anything else that’ll teach the little ones, and remind all the others of all the people came before them.” Only then did she face him, and even in the subterranean light, he could see the thin outline of her smile. “People like you.”

“Huh?”

“So when you get your big house in the upper city,” she said, her smile widening, “they’ll still remember who you are and what you did. Even five or ten or twenty years down the line.”

He swallowed hard. His cheeks were already burning, but he had no intention of tearing his gaze away from her. Élodie wasn’t making fun of him, she couldn’t be; he’d know it if she was. “Come on,” he mumbled. “Why remember me? I haven’t done anything worth shite.”

“Well, then,” she retorted, pulling her blanket a little closer across her chest, “that’s why it’s good to be best friends with a historian.”


	16. Corner of Prayers

At times, it felt to Ashley as though a good portion of his waking hours now involved running.

It seemed an endless ordeal. So often he and Marco were either running to or away from somewhere or someone, for an eternally unscrolling list of reasons he could never quite keep on top of, except that their goal was almost always some dubious hope of safety. Each corner of the Undercity spoke to different dangers, unique threats, singular terrors, all of which he had to attend to and memorize and overcome in order for him and Marco to remain alive.

But most exhausting of all was the ever-growing realization that the extent of one’s knowledge rarely seemed to matter in the Undercity. He and Marco spent one particular sleepless night scrambling through the entire length of a sewer network, wading through fouled water while doing their utmost to remain silent and hidden for fear of detection, only for their target to be nowhere in sight by the time they arrived at the point where they were meant to meet their young informant. They never did learn what had become of him - Marco’s various sources said he fell through some crack in the earth or got gutted in an alley up above or was taken away by Blackram Knights, all with equal certainty. Each answer was a reminder to Ashley of the whims of the Undercity, and how even those who had lived forever within its bounds could nonetheless disappear without so much as a hint of forewarning.

The futility of it all left him exhausted, even mean, and the scraps of whatever food they could scrounge up never seemed like enough to replenish the energy he so readily spent. Through it all was the constant, horrid, omnipresent threat of Blackram hanging over their heads.

Until at long last, the fire in his lungs took hold and overwhelmed him.

He could not recall quite how it happened, only that it happened sometime around dawn; he knew this only by the thin beam of sunlight streaming out from somewhere in their vicinity. The light spiraled as he fell, and tracking it with his eyes only gave him the urge to vomit. The brick walls of wherever they were might as well have been closing in, and yet Marco stood over him - he must have fallen - tapping the side of his face with an open hand.

“‘Ey, Ashley,” he called, louder than Ashley had heard him speak in days. “Stay with me, alright? You gotta breathe.”

“I’ll get up,” he promised. “I can keep going.” He barely knew what he was saying; he could scarcely tell which way was up, let alone find the energy to grant his feet purchase on the slimy stone floor.

“No,” said Marco firmly. He was closer now, sitting cross-legged before him, his presence the only familiar thing left to him. “I need you to breathe. Watch me close. Do what I’m doing.”

The sunrise painted his bare, thin frame in a pink glow, making it easier to focus in on his friend’s movements: with both hands, he illustrated the rhythm in which he inhaled and exhaled, the rise and fall of his own chest. Ashley followed and mimicked as best he could, employed himself in the motion until the room ceased its spinning, then closed his eyes and lost himself in the tidal shift of his breathing.

Ashley did not know how long he sat like that - but when he opened his eyes again, Marco was still absorbed in the exercise. To another, he might have been asleep: his hands had fallen into his lap, and his restful face bore no signs of fatigue or worry. But Ashley recognized, somehow, the energy he channeled with each and every breath. He could very nearly sense the power that coursed through his friend’s veins, and he could not help but be in awe of it.

As he watched, he saw Marco’s lips move ever so slightly to form words in patterns.

And so he waited. Gradually, the sunbeam shifted off of Marco and onto the uneven cut of stone behind him. As refreshing as it had been to control his breathing through rigor, it did him just as much good to simply sit there, to exist without purpose or obligation - to be a part of a small corner of the Undercity alongside Marco.

Marco came back to his senses some minutes later with a quiet, uneasy gasp. He blinked a few times in rapid succession as though startled, then calmed at once when he noticed Ashley before him. “…Sorry.”

Ashley shook his head to dismiss the apology. With no other inclination of how else he might welcome Marco back to consciousness, he asked, “What was that?”

“Meditation.” Marco hung his head a little, his posture uneasy for the first time since they’d sat themselves down. “Learned it from a Fist of Rhalgr.”

Ashley had seen plenty of physical feats since arriving in the Undercity, but none that had echoed the teachings of the monkhood. He did not know enough of Marco to determine where or how he might have gathered knowledge from the Fist, but the results of his methods, and the familiarity with which he spoke the unknown words, indicated significant practice on his part. “So you just… taught me meditation?”

“Yeah. It helps me, sometimes. 'Specially when I can’t sleep, but still need to calm down.” He nodded back to Ashley. “Somehow I figured it’d help you, too. Feeling any better?”

“Yeah. Loads better.”

“’M sorry. I shouldn’t’ve been dragging us around all over,” he said. “Wasn’t your fault for going down like that. I wasn’t pacing myself either.”

“Next time, you can just leave me. I won’t-”

Marco shook his head. “I’m not leaving you anywhere. Not with the Blackram Knights making the rounds.” Despite the solemnity of his words, a teasing grin found its way to his face. “Unless you’re looking to get rid of me, that is.”

Ashley gave him a light shove, though it almost bowled Marco over where he sat. “No way.”

“Just saying! Wouldn’t blame you if you were.”

“I mean,” said Ashley, “ _I_ wouldn’t want to put up with all my bitching, if I were you.”

Marco shrugged in a way that suggested a lack of argument to Ashley’s last, but his smile lingered with easy confidence. “Right, so let’s get moving. We probably won’t reach Orlagh for her tip by midday, but-”

“Wasn’t her apprentice the one we met the other night?” Ashley asked. “Fil… Fila…”

“Filo!” Marco clapped. “Yes! Twelve, you’re a genius.” He gave Ashley a hard thump to one of his shoulders, then leapt to his feet to stretch. “Filo’s always out by the old shipping elevators in the mornings. Elsewise, she follows Orlagh everywhere. She’ll be able to share the tip about Blackram in Orlagh’s stead for sure - and hells, she’ll probably be a bit more discreet about it than Orlagh.” He lowered a hand to help Ashley stand, and Ashley took it gratefully. “Up for just a bit more of a jog?”

He was, oddly enough, even in spite of the ceaseless night they’d already had. Hunger still grasped at his gut; somewhere, on the edges of his consciousness, exhaustion was beginning to sneak its way back in. But he had a destination, and a clear goal, and he found that that was enough to sustain him.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. I’ll be right behind you.”


End file.
